


Resonable Doubt

by fallen_sparrow



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Jury Duty AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2391812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_sparrow/pseuds/fallen_sparrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy and Clarke have the misfortune to land jury duty for the trial of the decade. What's more, the jury is sequestered, which means they'll be locked up in a hotel for a month.</p><p>It's an emotional case that hits close to home, and it's hard to aim for justice when revenge would be more satisfying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John Murphy’s trial had captivated the media in the way that only celebrity murders could. Turn on any television screen in nation and you’d see a clearly professional portrait of Wells Jaha, wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and embracing the family golden retriever. The Governor's son, the golden boy, with his father at college orientation, smiling in his soccer jersey, or dressed in a suit at college debate nationals. Governor Jaha’s stoic press conference played on loop.

Murphy’s mugshot, sallow and hollow eyed, was shown almost as frequently. His life had been unremarkable: dropped out of high school, went to jail for theft, worked in an auto shop. Arrested for the murder of Wells Jaha.

The sheer visibility of the trial was what prompted to judge to sequester the jury. Impartiality was impossible.

And thus, it was that, after the first day of the trial, Clarke Griffin found herself shivering in the courthouse parking garage. The vans that would take the jurors to the hotel where they’d be staying for the coming weeks were late, and the winter air had even managed to chill the underground lot. Clarke had packed a coat in her suitcase, but one of the court officers had piled all of their luggage in the corner: it would have to be searched for prohibited items (phones, computers, even magazines) before being returned. Her cardigan did little to cut the cold, and as much as she was dreading the hotel, she hoped the vans would arrive soon.

“Are you cold?” a voice asked from over her left shoulder and Clarke turned to see a tall, dark haired man, probably a few years older than her.

“Yes,” she said shortly. A few of the other jurors were making small talk, but there was a general hush in the echoing garage.

The man smirked.

The day had been a long one and Clarke wasn’t feeling particularly generous. “Did you come over here to laugh at me? Or are you going to offer me your coat?”

Now the man really did laugh. “But then I’d be cold.” After another silence. “I came over to introduce myself, but clearly you’re not feeling conversational.”

“We’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other later, I’m sure.” The trial would last a minimum of three weeks, during which the twelve jurors would all live in the same hotel.

“Yes, I am particularly looking forward to hearing about Mrs. Fan’s children.” Clarke followed his gaze over to a middle aged woman who was bragging proudly about her son’s violin recital to a man in an ill fitting tan suit.

At that moment, two white vans pulled into parking spaces across from the group. One court guard immediately began loading suitcases into the back of the nearest van. Clarke gave a tight lipped smile to the man next to her and moved towards the promise of warmth.

“Okay people!” a second guard, this one a short and serious woman, shouted, her voice silencing any small talk. “In this first van right here we have Mrs. Fan, Mr. Green, Ms. Gonzalez, and Mr. Blake.”

The man, Mr. Blake, gave an apologetic smile to Clarke. “That’s me. I’ll see you later, then.”

Clarke raised her eyebrows, too tired to make any other expression.

“And in this van, we have Ms. Griffin…”

\----

The local Marriott had cordoned off an entire floor for the jurors and their guards. After key cards were doled out and a reminder had been given not engage with any members of the media, Clarke was deposited in her room with her suitcase and told that dinner would arrive in 30 minutes.

After the lengthy day in the courtroom and the excruciating van ride, packed three to a row in seats clearly meant of children, she was ready for some rest.

While the room was large enough, it was sparsely furnished. An empty table sat across from the bed, the wires hanging messily from the wall indicating that a TV had been recently removed. The nightstand similarly lacked a phone. The desk had none of the usual take out advertisements and there wasn’t even a Bible in the desk drawer.

With literally nothing else to do, she opened her suitcase and began to hang her clothes up in the closet. At least they had left the ironing board. If she was going to be expected to wear pencil skirts and pants every day for the next few weeks, she would have to use it at some point.

Sometime later, there was a knock at the door. “Ms. Griffin? Dinner’s here!”

The guard who walked with her down the hall was remarkably cheerful. “We’ve got some Italian food for you all!” “You’ll be eating in the common room. Basically we’ve set up some tables there and you all are free to socialize there. There’s even a TV so you all can watch some movies if you ever get bored.” If. 

The rest of the jury had already gathered around the tables when Clarke arrived. She scooped some pasta from an aluminum pan onto a paper plate and grabbed a water bottle from the table.

Of course there was no where better to sit but next to Mr. Blake. Clarke made sure to already have a bite of pasta in her mouth before she sat down.

There was another amused smirk on his face. “Are you still cold?”

Clarke chewed as slowly as possible. “No.”

“So you’re a college kid then?” a nodded his head towards her oversized Harvard sweatshirt.

“Med student.” She was a touch resentful at his assumption. She had hoped that she had gained a more adult air now that she had one semester of medical school under her belt.

“Hey, nothing wrong with being in college,” he said, raising his hands up. “My baby sister’s a sophomore.”

Clarke took another bite of pasta. _Baby_ sister.

“Bellamy Blake,” he said, extending his hand to her after it became clear that Clarke wasn’t going to take up the small talk.

“Clarke Griffin.”

“How did you get stuck here then? Don’t you have to go save lives?” Bellamy was clearly on his second plate of food and didn’t seem to be slowing down at any rate.

This was a story that Clarke didn’t mind sharing. She wanted all the empathy, sympathy and general “god your life sucks” commiseration that she could get. “I’m on winter break. I postponed my jury duty summons and hoped that I wouldn’t be needed. But my - my mother convinced me to wear full business professional and they decided that I looked respectable. And now I’m spending my break eating tepid Italian food with a room of strangers.” _Mother_. Yes, what a wonderful way to sound like an adult. Just admit that your mother dressed you.

After a moment, she realized that she should probably reciprocate. “How about you?”

Bellamy shrugged. “I got the summons, figured I’d show up for a day, do my civic duty, be done. I wasn’t planning on getting assigned to an actual trial, much less _this_.” For the first time, his voice went from teasing to bitter.

“You seemed a little more cheerful about all this before.”

“Does anyone _want_ to be here?” Bellamy glanced around the room at the mostly middle aged jurors. “You might be missing your extended winter vacation, _Princess,_ but some of us have jobs, and some of us can’t afford to live off of the $20 a day that they so generously pay us.”

“I -” Clarke tried to think of reply but there was something so biting behind Bellamy’s words that she couldn’t. Something so accusatory.

Without another word, she stood and went over to the TV where a guard was queueing up _The Incredibles_. Bellamy was right about one thing: they weren’t paying her enough to put up with all of this. To put up with _him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out as a funny "what-if" head-canon that spiraled into this fic as I kept having ideas about how to translate Bellamy and Clarke into this setting. I fully recognize that it is a ridiculously obscure AU. (and probably a slightly nerdy one). Somehow this has also spiraled into something multichaptered, although I would say no more than 3-4 chapters total. 
> 
> Does it have the most cliched legal-reference title ever? Yes. Will it feature "give the people what they want" Bellamy and "laws are there for a reason" Clarke? Yes. Is jury sequestration a real thing? Yes. Has anyone every written this AU before? Unlikely. But just imagine: conflicting world views! living together! bickering! leaders who don't get along! Actually, don't imagine, just read?


	2. Chapter 2

**Day 2:**

Governor Jaha attended the trial with an entourage. From her seat in the jury box, Clarke counted four men with earpieces in and three aides who compulsively reached for their Blackberries before realizing that they’d had to surrender them before entering the courtroom.

The Governor wasn’t testifying today, so Clarke didn’t really know why he was here. Probably something to do with image. But honestly, she wasn’t sure how he managed to stay so stoic as the prosecutor described Wells.

She hadn’t known him, although she probably had about a hundred mutual friends with him on Facebook. He was a year younger than her, but everyone had known Wells Jaha. He was kid who organized charity events, and then came back every weekend afterwards to keep helping. He would have been visible even if he weren’t the politically minded son of the Governor about whom people were already whispering words like “senate race” and “vice-presidential candidate.”

God, the whole situation was hard to really even ground in reality. Wells had been a good kid, one of those really exceptional ones, and Clarke just didn’t like to think that the world would do that to someone like that.

Lunch break was called before Clarke could get too much into her own head and the jury was ushered into a conference room. “Just as a reminder, until deliberations begin, you are not to discuss the trial with anyone, including each other.”

Clarke understood the logic behind fair trials, she really did, but she wasn’t sure that it was reasonable to ask twelve people to spend eight hours a day in a courtroom, then shepherd them off to a hotel where their only contact was with each other and expect them not to talk about the case.

But she wasn’t about to break the rules on the second day. She was pretty sure she could cope better after she had eaten at least half of a turkey and swiss sandwich.

After a whole sandwich and a bag of chips, Clarke was even willing to make small talk with Mrs. Fan. The woman worked as a writer at an advertising agency and while Clarke wasn’t particularly interested in the workplace gossip, there was one especially funny story about trying to wrangle cats into a photoshoot.

“Let me take your trash for you, Mrs. Fan,” Bellamy said, reaching between them to stack the paper plate onto his own.

“Thank you, dear!”  
Bellamy reached for Clarke’s plate as well. “Thanks,” she muttered without turning around.

The lunch break continued with falsely cheerful conversation and by the end, Clarke was almost glad to go back to work.

As she was filing back into her assigned seat, she heard Bellamy talking to one of the other men. “What to do you say to starting a game of poker tonight?”

 

**Day 4:**

It was late Friday night that they were first allowed to call home. Technically they were supposed to have more frequent access to phones but there had been some hassle in getting all the family members to sign release forms. Even then, the phone calls had to be supervised by one of the guards.

At 10 Clarke left the common room where the others were waiting their turn and watching another animated film. It was Friday night and they had been allowed one beer each, provided that they drink it in the common room. But Clarke had wanted to wait until after she talked to her mother.

She opened the door to the room where the phone had been set up. Each call was supposed to be twenty minutes long, and she had been scheduled to go last. But when she opened the door, she realized that someone was still on the phone.

The door closed behind her silently and Clarke stood in the small entry hall, frozen in indecision.

She heard Bellamy’s voice, angry and low. “Listen. No, listen to me, O, I know that you’re an adult but that doesn’t mean that you can just trust everyone.” A sigh. “Okay, okay. But you had better meet him in a _public_ place. And tell Raven that you’re going.” Silence. “I’ll be back soon. And you can come visit me as soon as they let us.” Pause. “Well, I’ll manage somehow. They can’t fire me for this.” Now in a whisper. “Well of course it’s not ideal but when is life ever fair?” Another sigh. “Yeah, yeah I miss you too.”

And then Bellamy was pitching his voice to the guard. “Yeah, I’m done now. I’ll go get whoever’s next.”

Clarke froze, realizing that she really should have stayed outside. But before she could even think to duck into the bathroom, Bellamy rounded the corner. “Were you listening?” he snapped.

“No! I just got here.” Clarke said, avoiding his eyes.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to eavesdrop?”

Clarke made a noncommittal face. She had gotten caught and wasn’t about to admit anything to further anger Bellamy.

“Whatever, princess,” he said at last and stepped around her to leave.

Clarke took a deep breath to steady her heart and stepped into the main room. “I’m here,” she announced to the guard who was staring at his phone screen.

“Okay, Ms. Griffin.” He consulted a sheet of paper. “I’ll just dial this number here and then you have twenty minutes.”

The guard handed Clarke a ringing phone a minute later. “Hello,” a male voice answered. “Dr. Abigail Griffin’s office.”

Clarke frowned. “Franklin? It’s Clarke.”

“Oh, oh shit Clarke. How you’re doing?” He sounded a little bit panicked.

“Fine. Well, you know. Is my mom there?” As well as Clarke knew her mother’s assistant, she wasn’t going to waste her twenty minutes talking to him.

“She wanted to be. She did. But she got called away on an emergency.” Franklin obviously didn’t want to break this news.

“Oh.”

“She was really sorry.”

“Yeah, well, thanks Franklin. Bye.”

Clarke set down the phone. After a quick explanation to the guard, she headed back to the common room. She could use that beer.

It wasn’t that she had had anything special to say to her mother, but she had been looking forward to a conversation that wasn’t with a group of semi strangers. Clarke didn’t fault her for being busy either. Her mother was always busy and been even more so since Clarke had left for college and then medical school.

She entered the common room to find the lights half dimmed. It looked like the movie had finished and most of the others had gone to sleep. A single figure sat on one of the couches holding a beer.  
“Finished with your call already?” Bellamy asked.

Clarke had been worried that he would confront her again about his phone call so the question was almost a relief. She snagged a beer off the table and walked over to sit on the couch across from him. “Yeah.”

“That was fast.”

“Yeah, well she wasn’t around.”

Bellamy raised his eyebrows. “Who doesn’t answer a phone call from their sequestered friend?”

“My mother, apparently.” The beer wasn’t really cold any more but Clarke really didn’t care.

“Harsh.”

Clarke felt the familiar urge to defend her mother bubbling up. While Abby wasn’t a warm person, she and Clarke had always bonded over their shared interest in medicine. Yes, Abby hadn’t been around all that much, but Clarke hadn’t always wanted her to be. “Well she’s a doctor, and she had a patient. It’s not like she had any control over that.”

“Huh.” Bellamy sounded unconvinced.

“Who were you talking to anyways?” Clarke muttered, eager to turn the focus away from her relationship with her mother. “Girlfriend or something?”

An amused expression rose on Bellamy’s face. He really never seemed to make any effort to hide what he was feeling. “No. No, my sister.”

Right, he had mentioned his sister before. “You guys must be close.”

“You could say that. Octavia’s the only family I have.”

“Oh.”

Clarke took another gulp of beer. Someone had cranked the radiator in the room up to full blast and the humming noise filled any silence.

“So, uh, you’re mom’s a doctor. And you’re going to be one.”

“It runs in the family,” Clarke said, appreciating the change in subject. “You never said what you do.”

Bellamy ducked his head. “I, uh, work at the History Museum.”

“So are you the one giving the tours or do you put together exhibits?” She would never have guessed that he was the academic type. Something about his casual outfits and the fact that he looked uncomfortable in his courtroom clothes had given her more of a blue collar vibe.

Clarke was watching his face closely enough to notice the conflict on his face, as if he were deciding carefully what to say next. “Security guard, actually. But I’m taking some online classes and I’m hoping that once O is out of college I can apply to grad school.”

Clarke almost felt ashamed that her first guess had been correct. “Oh? What do you want to study?” Four years of college and now med school had made her a pro at making small talk with other students. It was always safe to ask about academic interests and future career plans.

“Classics,” Bellamy said with a grin. “And,” he held up his hands, “I promise that it has real world value. It helps a lot when they’re throwing all that legal Latin around.”

“I don’t know about real world value,” Clarke teased, “But knowing Latin would have made memorizing anatomy a whole lot easier.”

They sat in silence for a moment after that, but unlike the start of the evening, Clarke was actually making occasional eye contact. Nothing particularly funny had been said but Bellamy had a habit of smiling with a joking smirk and it made Clarke want to smile back.

The door opened and a guard poked her head in. “You kids going to go to sleep soon? It’s almost midnight.”

With a raise of her eyebrows, Clarke drained the last of her beer, setting the bottle down on the floor next to the chair.

Bellamy looked over to the side of the room, where there were still several unopened beers on the table. "Do you want another?" he asked quietly, nodding his head to indicate what he meant.

Clarke really considered saying yes. She had enjoyed having a conversation with someone close to her age. Or at least with someone who didn't have a family back home and therefore only talked about their family. But she also hadn't eaten much for dinner, and the single beer was already making her headachy-tipsy.

"I really should sleep," she said, pouring some of her reluctance into her voice.

"Alright," he said dryly, as if he'd expected that answer.

The guard apparently was tired of waiting for them, and flicked on all the lights in the room. Clarke jumped to her feed. "I'm coming," she called as she walked quickly towards the door. She didn't look back at Bellamy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Day 7:**

It’s been a week since the trial started and Clarke still hasn’t settled in. It’s hard to spend the whole day listening to evidence where a kid was killed, and then be happy in the evening. She knows that some of the others are bonding over their sequestration but she just can’t seem to enjoy Poker nights as much as the rest of them.

After a tense conversation with one of the guards, Clare was allowed to have her neuro-anatomy textbook, so she spent most evenings in the common room, taking notes. The trial would be over soon enough, they just had to stay sane until it was.

Today had everyone particularly on edge. They had spent an extra hour in the courtroom, and had only had sandwiches for dinner. Clarke sipped on the last of her warm Diet Coke and tried to focus on synaptic transmission, but it was hard to learn about neurotransmitter re-uptake when there was an argument brewing about which movie to watch. Apparently, some were in favor of The Incredibles again, but another group was hoping for Bridesmaids.

“Bellamy! Help me out” someone called as the man walked into the common room. “Which would you rather watch?”

Bellamy paused, examining the two DVD cases. “I don’t know, whatever the hell you want.”

He sounded bored at the question, and came over to sit near Clarke. Not in the chair right next to her elbow, but close enough that he was within speaking distance.

Bellamy’s reply about the movie had, predictably, not solved the debate. Clarke felt pressure building behind her eyes and set her textbook aside. Slowly, deliberately, she tore a piece of paper from her notebook, fished a pen from her bag, and stood up.

“Make a schedule,” she said calmly, but in a voice loud enough to project over the arguing others.

A few faces looked up. “Here,” Clarke held out the supplies. “You know, Bridesmaids today, The Incredibles tomorrow. It’s that simple. Just please, stop bickering.”

She was expecting some response, but the only one came from Bellamy. “Do you think they can’t figure it out on their own?” his voice was a slow drawl.

Clarke whirled on him. “Clearly not! And since you’re so keen on antagonizing this,” she shoved the paper and pen into his chest. “You can make the list.”

Without even pausing to grab her textbook, Clarke stormed out of the room.

* * *

**Day 10:**

Today is _the_ day. Clarke thought she’d feel numb, but she’s just not. Yes, she’s seen bodies before, even dissected them in her gross anatomy class, but she’s never seen a body like _this_.

There’s something about this murder, maybe about all murders, that’s undignified and gruesome. You don’t want to think about the world being like this. Sure, Clarke felt awful seeing how many people had mourned the kid, but there’s something even worse about seeing photographs of the autopsy and comparing them to the smiling boy she saw in the media.

Mrs. Fan is crying loudly, and has to ask a guard for tissues halfway through the medical examiner’s testimony. Clarke isn’t crying, because she never does, but she’s slowly tearing her fingernails shorter and shorter.

No one eats much at lunch. Clarke spends the next hour staring at Murphy. They’ve dressed him up, but his hair is as greasy as it was in his mugshot. His skin is sallow, his eyes sunken. He looks like someone who could be a monster. But Clarke keeps catching herself and reminding herself that dislike isn’t guilt. Wells is dead and it’s awful. But she’s a juror and she’s impartial and she’s not going presume guilt.

The van ride back is deadly silent. Clarke is a row behind Bellamy and she watches the muscles in his jaw jump the whole drive back.

Clarke skips dinner when they get back. She has some granola bars stashed in her dresser and she really, really doesn’t feel like making conversation. She’s about to try to go to sleep, or really do anything to stop thinking for a few moments when she hears a crash and a curse.

She throws open the door, about to get angry at someone for being so loud in the hallways but then she sees Bellamy, aiming another kick at the icemaker which has just fallen sideways. He bends down, as if to right it, but after a moment lets it drop down with another violent crash.

Clarke looks around for any guards in the hall, but they must all be in the common room. “Hey!” she calls to Bellamy, adrenaline making her voice harsher.

He spins around and Clarke sees what could almost be tears in his eyes. “I fucking hate him!” Bellamy bellows, kicking the ice machine again.

Clarke knows who he means. They probably all do. But Bellamy is yelling and the guards are going to come out any minute, and they’re really not even supposed to be talking about the case at all right now. So Clarke darts out of her room, grabs Bellamy’s arm and shoves him back through the door.

She slips back in, and turns the lock, before turning to see Bellamy standing rigid in the center of her room. “Hey, hey!” She says, in a voice she wishes was gentle, but just sounds urgent. “You need to _calm down_. You don’t want to yell so loudly that the reporters outside hear.” Now it’s an awkward joke that Clarke knows isn’t funny.

“Yeah? And what would they do to me then?” Bellamy snarls.

“Okay, okay, here, sit.” Without ever really touching him, Clarke maneuvers Bellamy towards her bed. For a minute she thinks he’s going to protest, but then he just sort of collapses into a sitting position.

“I just can’t stop seeing those pictures,” he mutters into his hands.

Clarke knows she should be comforting but nothing she can say will erase the images. “Yeah,” she mutters at last. “God, I never thought this would be this hard.”

“My sister’s his age.” Bellamy says. “And if anyone hurt her at all, much less like that, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Clarke wants to point out that she’s only a year older than Wells was but that doesn’t seem relevant. “You probably shouldn’t talk like that,” she mutters, hoping some guard doesn’t come and check on the noise and suddenly do something, what she doesn’t know, to remove Bellamy from the jury for what he’s saying.

It was the wrong thing to say. Bellamy jumps to his feet, his hands clenched in fists. “So am I just supposed to pretend it’s okay then?” he shouts.

“Of course it’s not okay!” Clarke closes her eyes and all she sees is a bloody face.

But Bellamy isn’t really listening to her. “You know,” and now his whole face is dark. “I saw a newspaper today. Someone had just left it on the bathroom counter. I didn’t open it but the headline was there. People want him dead. I think, I think we just might as well give the people what they want.”

“But what if he’s _innocent_?” Clarke is shaking now.

“You really think that’s likely? I think the people are right in this case. And who are we to deny them a little justice?”

Clarke takes a step towards him, any despondency she might have felt before falling away to this anger. It’s been brewing all day and now she’s glad to have some way to target it. “That’s not justice. That’s revenge!”

“Semantics, Princess.”

“No. No, you can’t mean this. Look it’s awful, it’s horrible that he’s dead, but you can’t just stop caring about the truth! That’s why we have trials. And why we’re here.” She gestures to the hotel room around them. “We’re the ones who they’ve trusted to learn the truth and look at the evidence without bias.”

“Jesus. But you saw what was done to that kid. Someone should pay for what they did.” Bellamy’s shaking his head now, as if to clear the images from it.

Clarke nods slowly. “I know, I know, and that’s why it’s up to you and me to try and think about this clearly. We don’t let emotion rule us, but we also don’t stop caring.”

Bellamy deflates now, sinking back down onto Clarke’s bed. “I just, I just…” He looks up at her, dark eyes trying to convey whatever he can’t say. In the dim lighting, shadows highlight his cheekbones.

She has nothing else to say to that. And she's exhausted. And she knows that if she thinks any more about today the burning behind her eyes will turn to tears.

So she grabs a granola bar from her desk and throws it at him. Then she sits down next to him and opens one of her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's interesting to me how different these characters act in these modern day circumstances. On one level, they're very much the same, but on the other hand, in canon they're under much more stress. And so Clarke steps up to the challenge a little more than she does here, and Bellamy is a bit more extreme.


End file.
